Category Archives: Football
A great Bayern victory
Never thought I would end up supporting and praising a German team, but I did last night. The precisoun, flow, spirit, and energy of their assault on Mouirinho´s Real Madrid contributed to making last night´s semi-final the best game so far of this season´s Champion´s League. I doubt the final will come anywhere near this. If Bayern repeats this performance, it will destroy Chelsea. In Sitges last night the sports bars were mostly empty. Those that were not, resonated to ecstatic cries of celebration. For Barca fans, seeing Ronaldo´s blunder in …
Barca´s nightmare night
So I eat my hat. Barca are not through to the Champions League final in Munich this morning as I had predicted days ago they might be, and sitting here writing this in Sitges, I share in the collective Catalan hang-over. My heart and soul tells me that Chelsea did not deserve to win. That a team that played for much of the game just defending their own goal line against a much more skilled and talented team that simply was unlucky on the night will make the final a …
Barca is Munich-bound
I am happily disconnected much of the time from modern comms at present but have wondered down to the village cafe mindful that my silence post El Classico might be misinterpreted. Barca lost because Guardiola got his starting line-up wrong and he is missing Villa. Now, I rarely make football predictions as you know but today is one of those exceptions. Barca will beat Chelsea with a sufficient margin to go through to Munich. Guradiola has told us his players are going to win. Oh, yes, and Pique is back.
A dampener at Stamford Bridge
I had twittered my expectation of ballet in the mud. Well, it turned out less than that, this latest encounter between FC Barcelona and Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. It was for sure wet, damp and cold sitting with a group of Barca fans just to the right behind the goal at the visitor’s end-the kind of conditions that remind one that watching even the best team in the world live sometimes involves a large degree of masochism. Just a yard and a line of stewards separated us from the nearest home …
Messi & Ronaldo: A study in contrasts
Anyone yet to be convinced of the value of Lionel Messi to the world of football need to have gone no further than watching him react to the two goals he scored against Levante last night. The first had him picking him up the ball from inside the goal and running back to the centre of the pitch with an attitude of total selflessness and determination. Barca had been trailing, 0-1 down. They still needed to win to have any possibility of keeping open the race for La Liga. The second …
Why we need La Cantera
Easter weekend had been watching two local youth teams battling it out on the outskirts of a very typical English provincial town. I have deliberately resisted naming the teams or the town as I would not want their reputations unfairly tarnished. Suffice it to say that I was shocked by the poor quality of football played compared to similar level games I have seen played in villages and towns across Spain, and I blame this on poor coaching and facilities rather than the lack of any potential talent- although it …
When thugs meet poets
There is something sadly somewhat predictable about some English sports page headlines this morning focusing on Lampard’s apparent statement that Chelsea has “some unfinished business” to take care of when it meets FC Barcelona in two weeks time. In fact my recollection is that Lampard was interviewed by an English TV journalist after the match against Benfica last night who used the phrase in his question, prompting an even less literate response. But the phrase stands as a necessary myth capable of fuelling the base instinct each previously humiliated …
Ibra, Messi, and the art of bullfighting
As I savoured the memory of last night’s Barca Champions League victory over AC Milan this morning’s surf landed me by pure chance on the Italian club’s supporters’ website Forza Rosseneri. It was an old page, now slightly dated but which nonetheless gave one an insight into the shortcomings of a club that once claimed, not without justification, to be the best in Europe. Alongside flashing advertisements showing semi-naked models promising that more would be revealed, the club’s CEO Adriano Galliani paid tribute to club owner Silvio Berlusconi- “These 26 …
Guardiola, Bielsa, and Maradona
Two images stand out from from last night’s game between FC Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao whose final score failed to undermine Real Madrid’s increasingly unassailable leadership at the top of La Liga. The first has the two ‘misters’ Pep Guardiola and Marcelo Bielsa, like the philosophers of football that they are , directing their pupils as if the nature of existence itself was being defined there and then . It is a study in contrasts- Guardiola intense and ephemeral as an El Greco saint, Bielsa ‘El Loco’ , a cross …
Herrera, Guardiola, & the catenaccio
During his time as manager of FC Barcelona, Helenio Herrera made a name for himself for a number of reasons. I would like to name just two. The first was as a very good psychologist. He was disdainful of other managers who failed to engage with their players and to bring about a real change in their attitude to the game. Herrera claimed to be able to look into the heads and heart of each of his players, and to be able to turn this to the team’s best advantage. …
